 Time management is something that almost everybody can get a little better at. We all get the same 24 hours in each day, but the key to managing your time is taking control of how you spend your 24. Effective use of time for a medical school student might look very different from effective use of time for a singer-songwriter or a bank manager. All of them might be very busy, but they'll probably manage their time very differently because they have different priorities. The key to managing time for you is understanding what your priorities are. Take some time to set some goals. In setting your goals, you want to set a lot of different kinds of goals. Usually it's best to start with your long-term goals and work your way backwards. Let's say your long-term goal is to be a neurosurgeon. In order to do that, you're going to need to get into medical school, and in order to do that, you're going to need to do well in college. That's going to require you to do well in high school. So from that long-term goal of being a neurosurgeon, you can back it up to goals that are happening between now and then. Your short-term goals are the things you want to do in the near future. So what do you want to do this semester? Think about each of your classes. How are you doing in each of them? How do you want to do in each of them? What can you do this term to make things possible for that long-term goal to happen later? Once you have an idea of your short-term or your semester goals, you can start to think about your weekly goals. What do you have do this week? Do you have any quizzes? Do you have any tests? Do you have any papers that are due? If you do have papers that are due, how are you going to plan out your work schedule to make those happen? So let's say you have a paper due on Friday. Maybe you need to have it drafted by Thursday, which means that you have to have started it on Wednesday, which means you need to have finished the reading by Tuesday. So by mapping out your weekly goals, you can make sure that you're going to get to the finish line when you need to. And then finally, you'll need to think about daily goals. What are your priorities today? What do you definitely want to make sure that you get done before you go to bed tonight? Establishing priorities can help you make it clear that your choices are about your time and about your values and your priorities. Feeling in control of your time and your choices is half the battle. So reminding yourself that the time you're spending doing some unpleasant task is directly connected to something you care about for your future can go a long way toward helping you stay on task. In priority setting, don't forget that non-academic or non-work-related priorities are important too. It may be that staying in touch with your family back home is one of your priorities. So you set a goal to face time with your little brother every Thursday. It may be that doing well on the softball team is a priority for you personally. So you plan a little extra time in the batting cage. Or maybe participating in the musical is important so you budget more time for working on your lines and learning the songs. The important thing about priorities is that they're yours and nobody else's. Once you've defined what matters to you and what your priorities are today, this week, this month, this semester, and long term, then you can start to budget your time to make sure that those priorities, whatever they may be, are getting the attention and the percentage of your time that they deserve.